Real Feelings.

Now that the Toronto Maple Leafs are on the road back to respectability, Canada needs a new punching bag. Why hello there GM Jim Benning of the Vancouver Canucks!

What’s that you say, you just re-signed “forever 3rd-liner” Brandon Sutter, “Swiss Pilon” Luca Sbisa and “My fantasy hockey team needs a ridiculous amount of PIMs if i’m going to make it through the week” Derek Dorsett to a triad of ridiculous overpayments? Pleased to meet you!

It’s never a good thing when a lot of talent leaves without being replaced, and it certainly looks like the Canucks are going to be in for a really rough season in 2015-16. They surprised last year, putting up a really good fight in the wild west, but when you lose useful depth players like Kevin Bieksa, Shawn Matthias, Eddie Lack and Zach Kassian for almost literally nothin except cap space and a nearly-deceased Brandon Prust, things aren’t looking too good. The aforementioned players aren’t exactly world beaters, but they served an important purpose.

Sure, Vancouver has a bunch of exciting prospects nearly ready to step into the fold, like Bo Horvat, Jake Virtanen, and Sven Baertshi, but they’re all far from sure things. The key players on this squad are still pretty good. The Sedin twins still have some gas left even though I hate them with an almost indescribable passion for the silly reason that their whole “We’re TWINS! LOL!” charade reminds me of these two twin girls I went to elementary school with who would always annoy the shit out of me by switching desks during class and being like, “but teacher, I’m not Sarah, I’m STACEY.” Chris Tanev is quickly turning into a clone of MA Vlasic as the defenseman who nobody ever talks about until they’re leading an Olympic squad to gold with pure rock solid defensive D, and some of the other top line players like Radim Vrbata and Alexander Edler (if he shows up to play) could fit in as top players on an elite team.

The Canucks are like a cheap shitty counterfeit holographic Charizard Pokemon Card. They look flashy and dope at first and you proudly display them in your card binder before you know any better, but then some slightly older and more knowledgable fan comes along and is like “dude, that’s a fucking fake you scammer” and you walk home crying and take your dope card out of the binder and keep it in your desk drawer so you can look at it sometimes, but you never show anyone ever again. And you feel horrible amounts of shame for thinking your Charizard card was cool in the first place.

Willie Desjardins has a dope moustache though, so they get a couple bonus points. But they have a trifecta of Ryan Miller and the Sedins, so -1000 points.